1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a terminal apparatus and a maintenance system for totally performing failure diagnosis and/or maintenance of an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Errors (abnormality and failure) such as abnormal noise, off-flavor, jam or image defective sometimes occur in an image forming apparatus such as a multi-functions. In that case, a user generally informs a service center for maintaining the image forming apparatus of the status over the phone. A service staff calls at a place where the image forming apparatus is installed to confirm the status and repairs. Reasons for failure and contents of repair works are data-based to improve a working efficiency at the time of repair by referring to data in the database when the same error occurs thereafter.
Hitherto, when a service staff calls at a customer, the service staff replaces a component, surveys an error and performs maintenance while viewing a document such as a service manual prepared on a model-by-model basis. Therefore, when reasons for failure and contents of repair works are data-based, work reports written by service staffs are collected and the service staffs manually identified work history, work content and failure reason.
However, such a method has a problem in that reasons for failure are vaguely identified as a result of implementation of a plurality of simultaneous works by the service staff. There is another problem that only a repair result is recorded without a repair work process to make unclear an actual repair work process. Then, there has been proposed a technique in which an image forming apparatus downloads a self-diagnosis software and automatically transmits a diagnosis result to a server (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 11-69063, for example). In addition, there has been proposed a system which automatically performs notification with a power supply turned on (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2006-072967, for example).
The above image forming apparatus can examine the status of the image forming apparatus and transmit diagnostic results to a server when its power supply is turned on, however, the image forming apparatus has a possibility not be able to collect data of contents of work and procedures of repair (for example, connection or disconnection of a bundle wire or replacement thereof) conducted with the power supply turned off.
A main conventional troubleshooting in an image forming apparatus performed at a customer's site includes the replacement of a substrate or a component and the repair of an imperfect-contact portion. These works are done with the power supply of the image forming apparatus turned off.
Therefore, if contents of the work conducted with the power supply turned off are little collected, although the results of self-diagnosis obtained with the power supply turned on are mainly collected, results of analyzing a failure cause using the database have a possibility not reflect an actual failure cause. As a result, even if an order of priority of work procedures is optimized using the database, failures could not be resolved depending on works according to the order of priority. Accordingly, it is desirable to identify the contents of work performed with the power supply turned off.